My First Time: Sarah Gerkensmeyer

My First Time is a regular feature in which writers talk about virgin experiences in their writing and publishing careers, ranging from their first rejection to the moment of holding their first published book in their hands. Today’s guest is Sarah Gerkensmeyer. Her creative research interests include bubble algae, nipple creams, internet ads for secular polygamy, Wonder Woman, and bare-chested female skin divers in ancient Japan (among many other things).  Her story collection, What You Are Now Enjoying, was selected by Stewart O'Nan as winner of the 2012 Autumn House Press Fiction Prize.  A Pushcart Prize nominee and a finalist for the Katherine Anne Porter Prize in Short Fiction and the Italo Calvino Prize for Fabulist Fiction, Sarah has received scholarships to the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference, Ragdale, Grub Street, and the Vermont Studio Center.  Her stories have appeared in Guernica, The New Guard Literary Review, The Massachusetts Review, Hayden's Ferry Review, and Cream City Review, among others.  She received her MFA in fiction from Cornell University and now teaches creative writing at State University of New York at Fredonia.  Click here to visit her website.

My First Superhero

I've got a lot of strange stuff in my short story collection. Looting babies. Gigantic catfish. Chocolate-milk-drinking monsters. But for some reason, the first and only time I have ever stopped and truly questioned a weird choice in one of my stories was when I decided to write about Wonder Woman. I was stumped. Why her? How did you get here, I wanted to ask her, in a story about a group of bored teenaged girls who kill time in the middle of nowhere Nebraska at the airport bar?

I did not read comic books growing up. But after I wrote a story about Wonder Woman (as an angst-ridden teenager in the middle of nowhere Nebraska), I began to wonder if there is a sense of story in any comic narrative that we can all tap into, whether or not we are true fans of the genre. So I've done a little bit of digging, in an attempt to understand at least a tiny portion of the superhero history that I've missed out on. It seems that with this topic you could keep digging back into eternity. Gilgamesh was an early superhero, people argue. The chalky, faded stick drawings on ancient cave walls, supposedly, tell the stories of superheroes. But let's start with Mandrake the Magician, who was born into the comic strip world in 1934. When Mandrake runs into a shady character, he simply gestures hypnotically, causing his foe to hallucinate. He can sidetrack any evil force in this way, from gangsters to mad scientists to extraterrestrials.

Now that's a story I can sink my teeth into.

When I teach students in my introductory creative writing courses about persona poetry, I show them examples like Jeannine Hall Gailey's “Wonder Woman Dreams of the Amazon” and A. Van Jordan's “The Flash Reverses Time.” These poems show students how strong and direct voice can be in poetry, and how much story a poem can hold. These poems tap into a longing that reaches beyond nostalgia, into something unspeakable. But both poems try to speak it nonetheless: pain and loss, enough of it to don a cape and perhaps a mask and to demand action and popping color. When I ask my students to write their own persona poems, they grimace at the task of giving a cartoon character an authentic voice. (The one rule of the exercise: Take your character seriously.) But then they churn out magnificent pieces in which Cap’n Crunch and Stewie from Family Guy are desperate and bursting with emotional epics that need to be told.

I like to think of story as something that is inherent in all of us, an instinct that each one of us is born with. And perhaps that's why I feel connected to the stories of superheroes that I've never paid much attention to. But there are the hardcore superhero know-it-alls—the true geek fan boys and the comic book scholars who know every single detail about overwhelming worlds that I know nothing about. Do I have a right to Wonder Woman, their busty, red-booted heroine? I think I do, because of the child-like fascination that comic books elicit in all of us, even if we aren't faithful fans. We all want to be fantastic. And we all want to hear a story about someone who suffered and then rose up to defeat evil. Superman's home planet exploded, along with all of his people, when he was an infant. Batman witnessed the murder of his parents when he was eight years old. And according to a 1984 issue of Marvel Comics’ Spiderman, Peter Parker was sexually abused as a kid. Tracing all the way back to Mandrake the Magician, who discovers that his nemesis The Cobra is his own half-brother, the backstory of any superhero is a sad one. They have a lot to bear. And so why not let them enter our own stories and live like us every once in a while? Why not give them a chance to be ordinary and small?

Maybe this is why Wonder Woman ended up in my story, in a dank airport bar in the middle of nowhere Nebraska with a horrible fake I.D. Self-conscious and bored. Give her a few horrible margaritas. Try to help her ignore the supernatural awareness of human suffering that's constantly buzzing about her head, at least for one night. Yes, when I decided to write a story about Wonder Woman, I was truly stumped for the first time. And yes, she might be the only superhero in my short story collection. But she's not alone. Look at the people we write about. Dig into their lives of solitude, their hidden identities and their radioactive backstories that burn like nothing else. Whether we tell these stories in pixelated, primary colors or not, they are all very familiar indeed.

I'm Burning Mark Twain on My Desk

....and boy, does he smell good!

Of course, I'm not really burning the Man or even his books; rather, it's a "Mark Twain-scented candle" from Paddywax.

And what, you ask, does Mr. S. Clemens smell like?  According to Paddywax, he's a combination of tobacco flower and vanilla.

Other authors in the Paddywax Library collection include Leo Tolstoy (black plum, persimmon and oak moss), Emily Dickinson (lavender and cassis), Oscar Wilde (cedarwood, thyme and basil), Edgar Allan Poe (cardamom, absinthe and sandalwood), Jane Austen (gardenia, tuberose and jasmine) and, pictured above, Charles Dickens (tangerine, juniper and clove).  If the store had stocked the Dickens scent, you can bet I would have grabbed it faster than you could say "Uriah Heep."

I bought the Twain soy candle and an air diffuser two days ago while shopping at The Modern Merchantile in Hailey, Idaho.  The Merc, by the way, is owned by Sarah Hedrick, queen bee of Iconoclast Books in Ketchum and my hostess during a recent two-day heavenly stay in Sun Valley.  I'll have more about my time in Sun Valley in a future blog post (including my literary tourism stops along the Hemingway trail), but for now let me just say that if you find yourself in this part of Idaho, you should stop in and say hi to Sarah and Gary at Iconoclast.  They're good people who love good books.  If they were candles, they'd smell like warm cookies and fresh-cut book pages.

Sunday Sentence: The Coldest Night by Robert Olmstead

Simply put, the best sentence(s) I've read this past week, presented out of context and without commentary.

The barroom smelled of stale beer, human brine, cigarette smoke.  The Christmas lights were so clear they etched the air.  He looked down at his fists and they were the color of bone.

The Coldest Night by Robert Olmstead

Soup and Salad: The Worst Novelist in History, Writers Re-Read, Lessons From Gatsby, A Writer's Ego, Embracing Rejection, The Return of Frank Bascombe (?), A 21st-Century Essential Canon, Writers Helping Writers, Author Movie Cameos, 10 Movies Based on Poems, The Ballet Also Rises

On today's menu:

1.  The Virtual Victorian somewhat cheerfully announces "The Worst Novelist in History."  E. L. James?  James Michener?  The guy who wrote that Mack Bolan series?  Guess again.  It's Amanda McKittrick Ros (December 8, 1860 to February 2, 1939)  an Irish novelist who, among other things, wrote that "eyes are 'piercing orbs,' or that legs are 'bony supports,' or that to blush is to be touched 'by the hot hand of bewilderment.'"  One of her book's titles was Six Months in Hell.  Indeed.

2.  It's doubtful any of the authors interviewed by the Los Angeles Review of Books at the L.A. Times Festival of Books ever read Miss Ros--let alone re-read her.  But several of these writers did return to The Great Gatsby again and again:




3.  Speaking of The Great Gatsby....No, I haven't seen the Baz Lurhman film.  Yet.  I'm dying to, old sport, but it'll have to wait until life calms down around the household (I was on the road for the last nine days).  In the meantime, at the Alaskan 49 Writers blog, Andromeda Romano-Lax shares the 10 Things She Learned as a Writer From Fitzgerald's Gatsby, including "Break up the backstory" and "Short can be sweet."

4.  The Book Fox was kind enough to post a quote from Carolyn See which, if it wasn't so long, I would have printed on a coffee mug so I could see it every time I went to take a sip of coffee while sitting at my computer (which is quite frequently, actually).  The quote begins like this: "Your ego is a big, messy, undisciplined, anxiety-ridden dog. It barks and whines and pees on the floor and sheds all over the furniture and takes nips at passing strangers and goes crazy when it sees another dog that might be bigger or smarter or prettier. This dog — at least in my experience — is untrainable. The only thing you can do is try to keep it on a fairly short leash."  Go to Book Fox to read the entire thing.  These are wise, coffee-mug, inspirational-poster words to live by--especially for me, a debut novelist who has just returned from the Oregon coast where his book was chosen as the annual county-wide Title Wave Read.  It's the kind of flattery that could really make my ego-dog pee on the carpet.  Fortunately, I have a down-to-earth wife who keeps me in check and held on a short leash.

5.  Rejection is another thing that helps keep me in line--I'm going on thirty years of "Thanks But No Thanks" in this writing business.  At the New York Times, author Beth Kissileff has a great essay about rejection.  Though she's talking about the college-admission process, she could easily have been describing the writing life when she says: "Experience has taught me that there is nothing wrong with continuing to try for something, even if you aren’t successful the first time. Getting rejected does not mean you aren’t a good student or that you don’t deserve to get in, but that there is a lot of competition."

6.  Could this be the return of Frank Bascombe?  Richard Ford fans certainly hope so.

7.  The century is still a little wet behind the ears, but that's not stopping GQ from putting out a list of 21 Essential Books of the Century (actually, what they said was "21 Books from the 21st Century Every Man Should Read," but I believe these are books which women, space aliens and literate parakeets could enjoy, too).  Of the 21 books on the list, I've only read 7.  I'm not too worried, though.  I still have another 87 years to read the others.

8.  Writers are "whack jobs" who live lives that are "weirdly full-frontal public."  At least, according to Laura Munson that's how it is.  I happen to agree with her.

It’s writers who buoy writers. We get each other. We cut each other slack. We connect each other. We forgive each other. We cut to the chase and we bleed easily with each other.

Click here to read the rest of Laura's lovely piece (which describes her friendship with novelist Lee Woodruff).

Who's that guy in the middle?

9.  Cool Lit-Flick Link of the Week #1: 9 Surprising Author Cameos in Movies.

"OMG!!  I had no idea this movie was based on a poem!!"

10.  Cool Lit-Flick Link of the Week #2: 10 Great Movies Based on Poems.

11.  Hemingway in a tutu?  The Sun Also Rises is also a ballet.

12.  And, closing on a personal note....I am now writing to you on this, my pre-birthday gift from the always-wonderful Mrs. Abrams:

Notice how easily and carefreely I balance my words on the tips of my fingers?  Talk about your "Freeeedom!!"

Friday Freebie: Bunker Hill by Nathaniel Philbrick

Congratulations to Allison Busby, winner of last week's Friday Freebie: Bristol House by Beverly Swerling.

This week's book giveaway is Bunker Hill: A City, a Siege, a Revolution by Nathaniel Philbrick, author of In the Heart of the Sea, Mayflower, and other compelling neo-classics of history writing.  Here's how the publisher describes Bunker Hill:

Boston in 1775 is an island city occupied by British troops after a series of incendiary incidents by patriots who range from sober citizens to thuggish vigilantes. After the Boston Tea Party, British and American soldiers and Massachusetts residents have warily maneuvered around each other until April 19, when violence finally erupts at Lexington and Concord.  In June, however, with the city cut off from supplies by a British blockade and Patriot militia poised in siege, skirmishes give way to outright war in the Battle of Bunker Hill.  It would be the bloodiest battle of the Revolution to come, and the point of no return for the rebellious colonists. Philbrick brings a fresh perspective to every aspect of the story.  He finds new characters, and new facets to familiar ones.  The real work of choreographing rebellion falls to a thirty-three year old physician named Joseph Warren who emerges as the on-the-ground leader of the Patriot cause and is fated to die at Bunker Hill.  Others in the cast include Paul Revere, Warren’s fiancé the poet Mercy Scollay, a newly recruited George Washington, the reluctant British combatant General Thomas Gage and his more bellicose successor William Howe, who leads the three charges at Bunker Hill and presides over the claustrophobic cauldron of a city under siege as both sides play a nervy game of brinkmanship for control.  With passion and insight, Philbrick reconstructs the revolutionary landscape—geographic and ideological—in a mesmerizing narrative of the robust, messy, blisteringly real origins of America.

If you'd like a chance at winning a copy of Bunker Hill, all you have to do is email your name and mailing address to thequiveringpen@gmail.com

Put FRIDAY FREEBIE in the e-mail subject line.  One entry per person, please.  Despite its name, the Friday Freebie runs all week long and remains open to entries until midnight on May 23, at which time I'll draw the winning name.  I'll announce the lucky reader on May 24.  If you'd like to join the mailing list for the once-a-week newsletter, simply add the words "Sign me up for the newsletter" in the body of your email.  Your email address and other personal information will never be sold or given to a third party (except in those instances where the publisher requires a mailing address for sending Friday Freebie winners copies of the book).

Want to double your odds of winning?  Get an extra entry in the contest by posting a link to this webpage on your blog, your Facebook wall or by tweeting it on Twitter.  Once you've done any of those things, send me an additional e-mail saying "I've shared" and I'll put your name in the hat twice.

My First Time: Virginia Pye

My First Time is a regular feature in which writers talk about virgin experiences in their writing and publishing careers, ranging from their first rejection to the moment of holding their first published book in their hands.  Today’s guest is Virginia Pye; her debut novel, River of Dust, is an Indie Next Pick for May 2013.  Annie Dillard called River of Dust "terrific, tremendous, wonderful...a strong beautiful, deep book."  Virginia Pye's award-winning short stories have appeared in numerous literary magazines, including The North American Review, Failbetter, The Baltimore Review and Tampa Review.  She holds an MFA from Sarah Lawrence and taught writing at New York University and The University of Pennsylvania.  In Richmond, she has helped run James River Writers, a literary non-profit organization.  Click here to visit her website.

My First Six Novels

As with so many writers, my debut novel is not my first, but instead, my sixth.  My first novel was accepted by a top-notch New York literary agent shortly after I received my MFA from Sarah Lawrence College.  I took the elevator to the sixty-sixth floor and sat in her office, not entirely sure why I was there, until she started to speculate that Meryl Streep would play the mother in the film version of my novel and Judd Hirsch, the dad.  I was twenty-seven years old and my life was about to change.  But as it happened, it didn’t.  No editors wanted that first novel, which was titled American Girl before the dolls became popular.

I wrote several more novels that a different excellent agent tried to sell, yet still no takers at the publishing houses.  I taught writing and literature at New York University and at the University of Pennsylvania, and had two children.  With young ones central to my life, I didn’t feel interested in returning to my most recent manuscript about a married woman who discovers she’s HIV-positive.  The story was too dark for a kid-friendly life in full swing.  In general, writing books had become woven with rejection in my mind and so, for close to a decade, I wrote very little.

But as soon as our second child went off to kindergarten, I started another novel.  So it goes with novels: they serve as bookmarks for key chapters in an author’s life.  They chart our obsessions.  One manuscript in particular kept trailing me for years.  It became the chapter that might never end.

Sleepwalking to China told the story of three generations of an American family in China and Vietnam.  I was convinced it was my most promising effort.  Around thirty agents ended up reading it, several more than once, and although there was positive feedback, each found it flawed, though not always for the same reason.  The writing was strong in parts; the characters rang true at moments, or the setting was often evocative, but somehow it didn’t hold together as a book.  More than one agent told me I needed to re-envision the entire structure.

But it took the caring, firm voice of Nancy Zafris (a novelist, short story writer and editor) to finally help me see how. We met for a long weekend at The Porches, a writing retreat in rural Virginia.  Nancy, who judges the Flannery O’Connor Prize and was a long time editor at The Kenyon Review, had read my novel before we met and warned me ahead of time that my book was actually two manuscripts, not one.  I arrived at The Porches prepared for surgery.  Together, we rolled up our sleeves for a weekend of conversation and brainstorming.  What a gift of forty-eight hours!  For once, I wasn’t alone in trying to figure out how to do the impossible alone.

I left the Porches on a beautiful spring day and drove with the windows open.  I felt free and exhilarated to have two novels plotted and ready to be written.  On April 1, 2012, I sat down and began writing like a fiend, saving about a chapter of the earlier book and producing thirty new ones.  Every other novel I had ever worked on was a slow, somewhat meandering process of organically discovering story and character.  This novel, which would soon be called River of Dust, shot out of me like a torpedo.  I finished that first draft on April 23, 2012, twenty-three days after starting.

Nancy kindly agreed to read that first draft and within several weeks Greg Michalson, editor and publisher of Unbridled Books, had read it, too, and offered me a contract.  By mid-June, my debut novel was on its way to publication.  Now, only nine months later, it has been chosen by independent booksellers to be an Indie Next Pick for May 2013.

The pace of those weeks, the startling ease of the writing, the fact that my editor took a first draft after I had spent years perfecting manuscripts with up to twenty drafts: none of it made much sense.  And yet, strangely enough, it did.  I’ve learned that, for me, it takes an inordinate amount of practice to write a good novel.  And the road was necessarily long and winding between my first first and my last first.

Sunday Sentence: The Coldest Night by Robert Olmstead

Simply put, the best sentence(s) I've read this past week, presented out of context and without commentary.

The men did not look human after war's subtraction: no eye, no ear, no nose, no face, no arm, no leg, no gut, no bowel, no bone, no spine, no muscle, no nerve, no breath, no heart, no brain, no faith.

The Coldest Night by Robert Olmstead

It's All in the Wrist: Hand-written manuscripts

Of all the regrettable things I produce in the course of a day--sulfurous farts, careless/thoughtless words to my wife, aggressive driving maneuvers--the thing I hate the most is my handwriting.  Somewhere along the line in my primary education I was never schooled on beautiful penmanship.  The only cursive writing I ever mastered was my signature.  And when I say "mastered," I mean I've perfected the illegible scribble which can be splashed across a dotted line in 2.4 seconds.

My handwriting is a thing of ugliness: squat, misshapen letters: "e"s with imperfect loops, "t"s that look like they have scoliosis, capital "D"s that have way too much flair and ego.  It's painful for me to look at a page of my scrawls.

But I'm fascinated by the handiwork of other writers.  Flavorwire recently unveiled a gallery of handwriting samples from the likes of F. Scott Fitzgerald, Mark Twain, Marilynne Robinson and Edith Wharton.  This is like cracking open the skull and getting a peek inside to the mind of the writer, as evidenced by the flow of ink from the hand.  Consider, for example, the heavy, ink-besotted cross-outs of Charles Dickens:

Or the neat-as-a-military-barracks-cot letters of John Steinbeck:

Or the upslant of Gustave Flaubert:

Or the battlemap diagrammatic arrows of Nabokov:

So, in an act of personal courage, I thought I'd give you a taste of my own irregular chicken-scratchings.  These are the pages (the only pages thus far) of a novella I started about six months ago (working title: FOB Sorrow).  This was an experiment, of sorts.  I wanted to see if I could write a novel long-hand.  You know, like they used to do in the old days.  As you can see, I didn't get very far--not because of cramped hands or the horror of seeing my misshapen letters, but because I got busy and distracted.  Maybe someday I'll return to FOB Sorrow.  For now, this is all I have, in all its sloppy handwritten glory (you may have to click each image to enlarge for readability):

 

 

 

 

 

 

A Marriage Founded on Seagull Poop

Our marriage was solidified by a seagull.  More specifically, seagull poop.  Little did we know that when that bird flying overhead released his load of gray-green fecal matter and it landed, glistening like an oyster, in my new bride's hair, he was doing us one of the greatest favors we'd ever know.  Neither Jean nor I realized it at the time, buffeted by wind in that parking lot on the Oregon coast, but we'd just been handed a gift.

We were less than one week into our marriage, and exactly six months into our relationship in toto (look up "whirlwind" in the dictionary and you'll find our engagement photo), and enjoying a resplendent honeymoon day in Yachats, Oregon.  As Jean tossed breadcrumbs over her head, gulls swirled, a tornado of cries that cut the air like creaking doors.  More and more birds gathered.  Alfred Hitchcock would have been pleased.

I stared at my new wife and smiled until my mouth hurt.  She was still a bit of an riddle to me, but--truth be told--I couldn't have picked a more lovely enigma.  We'd fallen hard and fast for each other since that day we met in June, got engaged in July, and were married during a record-breaking blizzard in Jackson, Wyoming that December.  We did everything fast and furious; our first pregnancy came one month into the marriage.  But when it's right, you just know, y'know?  And we knew we were made for each other.  It's like we were two Canada geese at a crowded cocktail party; when our eyes met across the room, we branded each other "mate for life."

And here we are thirty years later, still discovering new territory in each other, and expanding the boundaries of our love.

But the seagull--you want to know about that catalyst, Mr. Gull, right?

If you'll indulge me, I'll give you the story via a section of Fobbit which was left on the cutting-room floor.  I've told the story before about how my editor at Grove/Atlantic wisely encouraged me to trim the original draft of Fobbit nearly in half.  An entire subplot about Sergeant Brock Lumley's difficult days in Iraq was hacked out of the pages, along with several other long-ish bits here and there.  One of those chapters involved Lieutenant Colonel Vic Duret's longing for his wife back in the United States.  Near the end of the novel, he gets a letter from home and it triggers a series of memories...

Vic Duret used to think it was a cliché you only find in movies when soldiers sniff letters from home for traces of perfume.  But here he was, sitting on his cot in his hooch, that day’s mail call spilling across his lap, and just like a character from a World War Two film, he was sticking his nose against a card he got from his wife.

Jesus, was this the silliest goddamn thing a lieutenant colonel could do, or what?

But when he’s over here and desperate for even the slightest sensory reminder of home, a man will quickly succumb to the cliché.  Since the deployment began, Duret’s wife had been daubing her envelopes with perfume and now he found himself putting his nose to the triangle tip of the flap and inhaling deeply.  Something primal stirred deep within him, calling up a memory which felt like something from as long ago as childhood, but actually only dated back six months to their parting at brigade headquarters.  He now regretted not giving over fully to the emotion of the moment, not relaxing his rigid stance against Public Displays of Affection, not pulling her to him in a neck-breaking hug, not mashing his lips against hers as if it was the last time they would be mashed.  No, he’d held himself in check that day—his men surrounded him, after all, and what would they think of a lieutenant colonel blubbering like a baby into his wife’s hair?  He’d kissed her quickly, drily, and said the appropriate words (something like “Buck up, kiddo—I’ll be home before we know it”), then turned back to the business of loading his men onto the bus.  As they pulled out, he’d watched her run alongside the bus for thirty feet, had lifted his hand against the window, but then they were fully pulled apart as the bus belched diesel and lurched out of Fort Stewart.

As they turned onto the highway and headed for the departure terminal, Duret imagined his manic-depressive wife running a race with the bus, even as they were rolling along at 55 mph, her hair come undone and whipping around in the wind, traffic honking and swerving, her throat screaming his name.  He craned his neck to look through the window.  She was receding behind him, an ant-sized figure waving one arm at him.

He leaned his head against the window and closed his eyes.  The bus, full of unusually-silent men already missing their wives and girlfriends, accelerated as it headed north on the highway toward Hunter Army Airfield where the transport plane waited.  Duret was already going somewhere else in his head.

It was their honeymoon and they were on the Oregon coast.  Once they’d arrived at Yachats and paid for the motel room, they were down to thirty-one dollars and some change.  That week, they did a lot of sitting on the beach, visiting lighthouses, and staring mesmerized at the Devil’s Churn (was that the name, or did he misremember it as the Devil’s Punchbowl?).  They couldn’t even afford to go down into the Sea Lion Caves, so they stood at the top of the hill against the chain link fence and listened to the distant bark of the sea lions, standing on tip-toe and pressing their cheeks to the metal diamonds in order to catch glimpses of the dark bodies going in and out of the waves far below.  Once, after a lunch of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches at a rest stop, they’d fed the flock of seagulls wheeling overhead, tossing stale breadcrumbs in the air.  He had a photo of her, laughing and flinching from one of the diving birds.  Shortly after he’d snapped that one, the gull had crapped in her hair.  She held up the strands of soiled hair, said, “Ewww, gross!”  Then he laughed and she laughed and they couldn’t stop.  Back then, laughing came easy to him.  He’d taken her over to the restrooms to get a paper towel so they could wipe it out of her hair, but the dispenser in the men’s room was empty and he’d had to bring a small ball of toilet paper out to her.  Then he’d said something about “shit shampoo” and that had only made her laugh harder, so hard she peed her pants, and instead of being mortified at her darkening crotch, she laughed even harder, and he remembered that was the moment he knew they’d be together for a long time.  A long, long time.

Now, sitting in his wind-rocked hooch on FOB Triumph, he pressed the mail to his face and took her scent in through his nostrils, imagining his nose nestled against the hollow of her neck, his lips grazing the pulse of a vein.  He sat on his cot for a good five minutes sniffing this latest envelope, finding his wife somewhere in the fibers of the paper, before breaking open the seal and pulling out the card.

*     *     *

 

 

Oregon has been on my mind a lot lately--mainly because this time next week, Jean and I will be back on the Oregon coast, visiting our old haunts.  I've been invited to Coos Bay to give a series of readings as part of their Title Wave program.  I am so honored they chose Fobbit for their community-wide read and I'm looking forward to meeting those readers and talking about how I came to write the book and build the characters, like Lt. Col. Duret, out of my imagination and memory.

 

If you're in the area, I'd love to see you at any of these events:

May 13:  Coos Bay Public Library, 7 pm
May 14:  Lakeside Public Library, 1 pm
May 14:  Bandon Public Library, 7 pm
 

On the way out to Oregon, I'll be stopping at Boise, Idaho's Rediscovered Books for a reading this Friday at 7:30 pm.  And on the return trip home from the coast, I'll be in Ketchum, Idaho at the Community Library on May 16 at 6 pm.  That event is sponsored by Iconoclast Books.

 

This will be the first time either of us has returned to the Oregon coast since we moved away in 1987, four years into our still-fresh marriage.  Our relationship had its infancy in Eugene while I attended the University of Oregon, worked as a cook in a steakhouse, and together we birthed and raised two boys.  As a couple, we also managed a boat-and-trailer storage yard just to make ends meet (and, trust me, those ends barely met at times).  But, hard as they seemed back then, those were good years for both of us--hard, happy days full of rain, hamburger-patty dinners, and daytrips to the coast (carefully calculated with rationed fuel and homemade peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches) where we walked along the damp sand and flinched, laughing, when the gulls cried their warnings over our heads.  This is the stuff love and dreams are made of.

Trailer Park Tuesday: Call Me Zelda by Erika Robuck

Welcome to Trailer Park Tuesday, a showcase of new book trailers and, in a few cases, previews of book-related movies.

With Baz Luhrman's 3-Delightful version of The Great Gatsby opening in movie theaters this week, F. Scott Fitzgerald is suddenly in vogue again.  Interestingly, it's his wife Zelda who is getting all the attention in a bumper crop of novels this year--Therese Anne Fowler's Z, Lee Smith's Guests on Earth, R. Clifton Spargo's Beautiful Fools and, just released today, Erika Robuck's Call Me Zelda.  Robuck has already taken her literary imagination into the household of Ernest Hemingway (Hemingway's Girl) and has a novel about Edna St. Vincent Millay in the works, so I'm intrigued by what she has in store for readers who want to know more about the troubled marriage of Mr. and Mrs. F. Scott Fitzgerald.  In the trailer for Call Me Zelda, Robuck reads a couple of excerpts from the novel, places flowers at the couple's graves, and talks about what led her to write about Zelda.  At her website, she describes more of the book's plot and inspiration:

It begins in Baltimore in 1932 when Zelda Fitzgerald checks into the Phipps Clinic at Johns Hopkins, and takes place during the aftermath of the Fitzgerald party years. Through Zelda’s relationship with a fictional psychiatric nurse, the book explores the meaning of friendship, love, and how we heal from emotional injury.  Call Me Zelda is a book that I’ve held close to my heart for a long time, inspired by my fascination with F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald, and by the nurses I’ve known in my life (grandmother, mother-in-law, aunt, sister-in-law, friends…), who give so much of themselves to their patients. It also comes from my compassion for those who suffer mental illness and post-traumatic stress disorder, the ways they are often misunderstood, and the pain of the family members caring for them.

My First Time: Jessica Francis Kane

My First Time is a regular feature in which writers talk about virgin experiences in their writing and publishing careers, ranging from their first rejection to the moment of holding their first published book in their hands.  Today’s guest is Jessica Francis Kane, author of the new short story collection This Close from Graywolf Press.  Her first novel, The Report, was a Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers selection and a finalist for both the Center for Fiction’s 2010 Flaherty-Dunnan First Novel Prize and the Indie Booksellers’ Choice Award.  She is a contributor to the Morning News and lives in New York City.  You can follow Jessica on Twitter at @JessicaFKane.

My First Acceptance

For a long time, the thing I knew I had to do was publish a story.  This would be the beginning, as I understood it, of a writing career.  I knew that before this day could come, I would have to send out stories, lots of them, and receive many, many rejection letters.  I accepted this.  So I graduated from college with a degree in English and went to New York City to get started.  I got a job at a mid-size publishing house.  By day I was a publicity assistant; by night, a writer.  I worked on my stories, crafted careful, polite cover letters, and always had the next self-addressed stamped envelope, or SASE, at the ready.

As predicted, the rejection letters started arriving.

But I knew this was a long, rough road.  I’d read about one writer who papered his bathroom wall with rejections.  I’d heard others speak of bulging file folders.  I was not discouraged, not yet.  I went to readings when I could.  I read magazines at the library.  I memorized the typefaces of every magazine and literary journal, knew the dimensions of each one’s pre-printed rejection slip.

When my file folder started to bulge, I switched to a file box.

After a time there were little glimmers of hope: handwritten notes, bits of encouragement.  One letter I’ll never forget, from a famous glossy magazine, described the story I’d submitted as “a bit numbing” but went on to say, “you’re plainly a writer and I’m sure we should see more of your work.”  How I rejoiced and agonized over those words.  Was it an invitation?  If so, why not just say, We’d like to see more of your work.  Or, Send us another story.

Meanwhile, I created a special area of my apartment where I kept my SASE supplies: envelopes, stamps, manila envelopes, paper clips, staples.  I even invested in a little white plastic scale so that I could determine postage myself and cut down on time spent at the post office.  I began to joke with my family that I was the fastest SASE-addresser in the west, though I lived in the east.

It wasn’t a very funny joke.

I did allow myself to daydream about the day of acceptance.  Often, this was the only dream that kept me going.  I was pretty sure the news would come by phone, and so sometimes if I came home from work and there was a message on my machine (this was before cell phones and texting, you see), I would walk slowly to the table to press the button, relishing the last few moments of possibility before hearing a message from my mom or bank or dentist.

But it also seemed possible that the news might come by fresh envelope, the magazine’s own letterhead, my handwriting nowhere in sight.  This is perhaps an under-reported and, as more and more submissions are handled electronically, soon to be forgotten consequence of the SASE system—eventually you despise the sight of your own handwriting.

Which is why on a spring day in 2000, when I opened one of my own SASEs returned to me from the Virginia Quarterly Review, I was so confused.  There wasn’t a slip inside.  There was a whole piece of paper that I had to unfold.  Then I read the first sentence and it didn’t contain the word “unfortunately.”  I stood in my kitchen and read that letter through twice before I truly understood it was an acceptance.  The VQR was accepting my story, “Exposure,” my first major fiction publication.

That night my husband and I went out to dinner to celebrate.

Here’s the moral of the story: Very little happens exactly as you imagine it will, and this might be especially true of publishing and the writing life.  Months later I asked the editor why he had used my own SASE to accept my story.  Didn’t he know I’d been waiting all my life for a different kind of sign?  His answer: He was just saving postage.


Photo by Nina Subin

Sunday Sentence: Woke Up Lonely by Fiona Maazel

Simply put, the best sentence(s) I've read this past week, presented out of context and without commentary.

Olgo was so clammy by the time they rolled into Blackstone, his skin was made of eel.

Woke Up Lonely by Fiona Maazel

Friday Freebie: Bristol House by Beverly Swerling

Congratulations to Leah Welch, winner of last week's Friday Freebie: Red Moon by Benjamin Percy.

This week's book giveaway is Bristol House, the new novel by Beverly Swerling (author of the "City" series: City of Promise: A Novel of New York's Gilded Age, City of God: A Novel of Passion and Wonder in Old New York, City of Glory: A Novel of War and Desire in Old Manhattan, and City of Dreams: A Novel of Nieuw Amsterdam and Early Manhattan).  Here's how the publisher describes Bristol House: In the tradition of Kate Mosse, a swiftly-paced mystery that stretches from modern London to Tudor England.  In modern-day London, architectural historian and recovering alcoholic Annie Kendall hopes to turn her life around and restart her career by locating several long-missing pieces of ancient Judaica. Geoff Harris, an investigative reporter, is soon drawn into her quest, both by romantic interest and suspicions about the head of the Shalom Foundation, the organization sponsoring her work. He’s also a dead ringer for the ghost of a monk Annie believes she has seen at the flat she is subletting in Bristol House.  In 1535, Tudor London is a very different city, one in which monks are being executed by Henry VIII and Jews are banished. In this treacherous environment of religious persecution, Dom Justin, a Carthusian monk, and a goldsmith known as the Jew of Holborn must navigate a shadowy world of intrigue involving Thomas Cromwell, Jewish treasure, and sexual secrets. Their struggles shed light on the mysteries Annie and Geoff aim to puzzle out—at their own peril.  This riveting dual-period narrative seamlessly blends a haunting supernatural thriller with vivid historical fiction. Beverly Swerling, widely acclaimed for her City of Dreams series, delivers a bewitching and epic story of a historian and a monk, half a millennium apart, whose destinies are on a collision course.

But wait!  There's more!  The publisher has thrown a couple more goodies into this week's giveaway.  This week's winner will also receive a bar of lavender soap and some candy.  Sweet!

If you'd like a chance at winning a copy of this special Bristol House prize package, all you have to do is email your name and mailing address to thequiveringpen@gmail.com.

Put FRIDAY FREEBIE in the e-mail subject line.  One entry per person, please.  Despite its name, the Friday Freebie runs all week long and remains open to entries until midnight on May 16, at which time I'll draw the winning name.  I'll announce the lucky reader on May 17.  (Please note this is a two-week contest--I'll be on the road promoting Fobbit next Friday and won't have time to post a Friday Freebie.)  If you'd like to join the mailing list for the once-a-week newsletter simply add the words "Sign me up for the newsletter" in the body of your email.  Your email address and other personal information will never be sold or given to a third party (except in those instances where the publisher requires a mailing address for sending Friday Freebie winners copies of the book).

Want to double your odds of winning?  Get an extra entry in the contest by posting a link to this webpage on your blog, your Facebook wall or by tweeting it on Twitter.  Once you've done any of those things, send me an additional e-mail saying "I've shared" and I'll put your name in the hat twice.

Soup and Salad: Visiting Tolstoy's estate with hungover honeymooners, Owen King wrestles with titles, Leigh Newman fights fear, Being a better literary citizen, A book club directory

On today's menu:

1.  Literary pilgrim Stephen Phelan takes us on a tour of a few writers' homes, including those which once belonged to the Brontes, George Orwell, J. G. Ballard, and this memorable day at Leo Tolstoy's country estate near Tula, Russia:

      It's a gloomy, windy Sunday when I visit, and a long, muddy walk from the main road and through the sodden grounds to the mansion house itself. Inside, I tag along with a couple of hungover Scottish newlyweds--hardcore Tolstoy readers who pre-arranged a tour in English for the first day of their honeymoon. Scholar-in-residence Galina Alekseeva talks us through the interiors and contents: the aristocratic family portraits; the library that was later partly burned by occupying Nazis; the so-called "vaulted room" where Tolstoy wrote in the mornings, permitting only his wife, Sofia, to enter with his cups of tea. Beside this, the small cramped room where 5000 mourners came to kiss the hand of his corpse in 1910.
      An odd custom has developed around Tolstoy's grave, a simple grass mound in the woods nearby: young couples go to lay flowers and ask the master's blessing for good luck and lasting love. The newlyweds forgot to bring a bouquet, so we just stand there in the cold rain, with the autumn wind stripping leaves off the surrounding oaks. The scene is so melancholy that we have to laugh, which strikes us as a suitably Russian response. We tell ourselves that Tolstoy would approve.

2.  At The Weeklings, Owen King delves into the problematic issue of book titles.  King's new novel, Double Feature, was originally called Reenactment, but his editor nix-nayed that title because Nick Flynn was just about to release his memoir The Reenactments.  King polled a few of his writer-friends to see if they shared his titular frustration.  Stewart O'Nan, Amber Dermont, Timothy Schaffert and others responded.  If you'll recall, there was some eleventh-hour indecision on what to call Fobbit.  I toyed with naming it "Soft Men, Hard Bullets" or, most embarrassingly, "Of Men and Marshmallows."  I even went so far as to put out a call for help from blog readers; but in the end, my editor at Grove/Atlantic liked Fobbit enough to keep it.  Thank God he did because I don't think I could have lived with a marshmallow book.


2a.  Oh hey, I almost forgot: What I really wanted to highlight in Owen King's article was this spot-on perfect description of what it's like for a writer to live with a work-in-progress for years and years:

      If you’ve never attempted to write anything of a novel’s length, imagine having a friend or relative visit you for roughly that length of time, for three or five or seven years. Imagine a person, a person with whom you are not enjoying anything like traditional sexual congress, leaving their little hairs and toenail clippings in your sink, sprinkling their droplets of pee on your toilet seat, cluttering your surfaces with their weird pocket stuff, sticking things in the wrong cabinets, being underfoot and distracting you constantly for three or five or seven years. Let’s be honest: even if it was your favorite cousin, and even though you sort of invited him, after a year or so, you would owe it to yourself to give, at minimum, tacit consideration to murdering this person. This is the unique affliction of writing books: the endeavor is such that you can never entirely stop thinking about it. Picture the houseguest that is your novel, day after day, chewing cereal with his mouth open, his butt cratering the seat of your favorite armchair, and you will begin to understand.
      After your houseguest/novel does finally stomp all his dirty underwear down into his duffel bag, after his stupid buddy with the flatbed arrives to drag off the piece of shit four-wheeler that has been sitting dead in the middle of garage, after your houseguest/novel/ hemorrhoid finally has it together enough to decamp and set up in a place of his own – i.e. a publishing house – the relief you feel will likely open the gates to feelings of magnanimity. The memories of the good times – that one scene that clicked on the first pass, that passage that said so much more than your ever hoped – may become foremost, but it should be self-evident that such pleasure depends on the book being out the door. Here lies the major portion of the unhappiness that so often attends the editing of any novel: with the son-of-a-bitch finally gone, you don’t want him crashing on your couch again, not even for a weekend.

3.  At the 49 Writers blog, Leigh Newman (Still Points North: One Alaskan Childhood, One Grown-up World, One Long Journey Home) fights off the black ball of fear, and finds that it's not unlike surviving a plunge in a plane, pulling your dog out of wave-battered rocks, or falling from a raft into Class 4 rapids.


4.  Every so often, I read a piece of writing which brings me up short, slapping me in the face with the reminder that I can be a better person.  The recent essay "Writer Friends: the Rules of the Community" by Jennifer Niesslein at The Virginia Quarterly Review is one such article.  Niesslein says we can all be better citizens of whatever community in which we reside if we would just set ourselves aside and look outward to others.  It's kind of like that Michael Jackson anthem "Man in the Mirror."

We don’t know what it is about publishing that makes some writers lose both their minds and common sense, but many of us have been victim to another writer’s bad manners. The more successful among us have felt the weight of other writers trying to ride our coattails.  The rest of us have endured conferences where other writers try to establish their importance, aren’t interested in an actual conversation, and vampire the energy from the room. We’ve spoken with writers who drop the phrase “my agent” so many times, one might suspect the two were lovers.

I read this and fall into soft contemplation, knowing I have probably been guilty of some of this--especially in the past year.  It's like another writer friend of mine once confessed to me, "I hope you never have to live through the experience of having a couple of books published and having no one interested in anything you have to say, because it's an awful place.  And of course it conjures up all kinds of exaggerated ideas about what people think of you, and what they might be doing to perpetuate your misery.  All imaginary, of course.  And of course, the worst thing about it is that you occasionally give in to the desire to express feelings that are based on these imaginary slights, to the complete bewilderment of those on the receiving end."  May we all be so self-aware.

Remember this book club in Lost? They read Stephen King's Carrie.
"It's not even literature," one member complained, "it's popcorn."

5.  This GalleyCat item prompted me to sign up for the "Authors Who Visit Book Clubs" directory.  Fellow writers, it's worth your while to add your name to the list (as long as you're comfortable sitting in a semi-circle of readers blabbing about your book for up to an hour or more); book clubbers, be advised there are some pretty cool authors who are willing to come talk to your group, including Randy Susan Meyers, Meg Waite Clayton, Brendan McNally, Terese Svoboda, Jenna Blum, M. J. Rose, Laura van den Berg, Melanie Benjamin, Lauren Groff, Robert Goolrick and hundreds more.  I myself have Skyped with a couple of groups and really enjoyed the experience.  And I promise I was wearing pants at the time.

Front Porch Books: April 2013 edition

Front Porch Books is a monthly tally of books--mainly advance review copies (aka "uncorrected proofs" and "galleys")--I've received from publishers, but also sprinkled with packages from Book Mooch, Amazon and other sources.  Because my dear friends, Mr. FedEx and Mrs. UPS, leave them with a doorbell-and-dash method of delivery, I call them my Front Porch Books.  In this digital age, ARCs are also beamed to the doorstep of my Kindle via NetGalley and Edelweiss.  Note: most of these books won't be released for another 2-6 months; I'm just here to pique your interest and stock your wish lists. Cover art and opening lines may change before the book is finally released.

The Cost of Living by Rob Roberge (Other Voices Books):  This book came to me by way of my good friend Gina Frangello (and when I say "good friend," I should clarify that Gina and I have never met in person, but have bonded over the internet for years and I trust her literary tastes, so when she says, "You should read this," I don't say anything, but just bow and obey).  Gina said Rob was an AMAZING writer--and you know when Gina Frangello puts something in All Caps, you better sit up and pay attention.  Well, I dipped into the first few pages of The Cost of Living, and you know what?  Roberge's prose is, indeed, AMAZING.  It begins with two police-blotter clippings from a newspaper about a missing woman, and then...Here are the Opening Lines:

The night before my father would beg me to kill him, I sat alone in a hotel room across the street from his hospital, rereading old newspaper articles about my mother's suicide.  I had six months clean for the second time in my life.  The first time stuck for six years.  But that seemed impossible to do again.  My skin itched and my body crackled and I had no idea how I'd get through the next five minutes, let alone the night, or the rest of my fucking life without being loaded.  I was freezing and the room wasn't cold.  I went into the bathroom and turned on the heat lamp, which came on along with a fan, and I paced for a minute.  I sat on the toilet, fully clothed with the seat down and counted the square-inch white tiles on the floor three times while breathing deeply.  I listened closely to the fan's small jetlike idle to block any thoughts that might come.  I tried counting the tiles on the walls but couldn't concentrate.  I looked back down at the floor.  I let my sight blur, and the moldy grout started to form a pattern that looked like floating chicken wire.

I love the level of detail and the compulsive force of the language which pulls us right in to the head of this character.  Here's more about the book from the Jacket Copy:

To the shock of lovers and rivals, indie guitarist Bud Barrett is finally—if tenuously—married, clean, and sober. Now he faces the challenge of staying that way. To avoid repeating the past, Bud needs to confront the ghosts that dwell there. After decades of seeking redemption in the arms of “pervy Florence Nightingales,” Bud finds himself still haunted by his mother’s abandonment, his own array of crimes, and a murder he witnessed as a child. As he revisits his life of grief and reckless excess, all paths lead to his long estranged father, a man with his own turbulent history and the only one who can connect Bud’s fragments, unlocking the answers that just might save him.

So, thanks, Gina for the introduction.  I can hardly wait to learn more about those pervy nurses.

Enon by Paul Harding (Random House): Okay, confession time: I still haven't read Paul Harding's Pulitzer Prize-winning 2009 novel Tinkers, even though I really really really really want to.  It's in good company on that unread shelf, joined by Housekeeping, A Confederacy of Dunces and Lolita.  One of these days, one of these days (he says while shopping for real estate on deserted tropical islands).  And now along comes Harding's new novel, due to hit bookstores in September.  Here's the Jacket Copy:

The Dallas Morning News observed that “like Faulkner, Harding never shies away from describing what seems impossible to put into words.” Here, in Enon, Harding follows a year in the life of Charlie Crosby as he tries to come to terms with a shattering personal tragedy. Grandson of George Crosby (the protagonist of Tinkers), Charlie inhabits the same dynamic landscape of New England, its seasons mirroring his turbulent emotional odyssey. Along the way, Charlie’s encounters are brought to life by his wit, his insights into history, and his yearning to understand the big questions.

And here are the wrenching Opening Lines:

Most men in my family make widows of their wives and orphans of their children.  I am the exception.  My only child, Kate, was struck and killed by a car while riding her bicycle home from the beach one afternoon in September, a year ago.  She was thirteen.  My wife, Susan, and I separated soon afterward.

In an earlier interview at Tin House, when he was "75% done with the first draft" of the novel, Harding described a little bit more about the book:

The title of it is Enon, which is the town in Massachusetts in which George Crosby dies. In his mind, to where he escaped from his youth in Maine. It’s the original colonial name for Wenham, the town I grew up in, just a little bit north of Boston.  So this next novel is about one of George’s grandsons. His name is Charlie Crosby, and he actually makes about a one-sentence cameo in Tinkers. So it’s about him and his daughter, Kate. The action is subsequent to that in Tinkers, and set in the same location, but it’s not a sequel per se. As Charlie makes his way through the plot or the circumstances of the novel, George will show up as part of Charlie’s sort of reservoir of memories and reference points, but it’s not a continuation of the action of Tinkers. I have some idea that I’ll go back and a third book will be connected with the same family, so I might be coming up with my own little New England Yoknapatawpha one of these days.

Okay, fair warning.  I need to read Tinkers before September.

Ghost Moth by Michele Forbes (Bellevue Literary Press):  This debut novel by Michele Forbes begins with a great, menacing scene in choppy ocean waters.  I was thoroughly hooked by these Opening Lines:

      The seal appears from nowhere, an instant immutable presence in the sea--although he must have been swimming silently beneath the surface for some time without her knowing.  Katherine shudders in the water; her thoughts are moving like fast cold spikes inside her head.  Where has he come from?  Is he lost?  Has he come to feed?  The seal's heavy muzzle thrusts toward Katherine; his nostrils--two dark inlets--flare: He is taking in her smell, her fear.  His stiff eyebrow hairs, beaded with sea drops, crisscross the thick shadowy skin of his dark, wide head.  Battle-scarred, his snout slopes to an ugly dull point where his long wiry whiskers afford him the seductive familiarity of a family dog.  But it's his eyes--the eyes of this wild animal--that terrify Katherine the most; huge, opaque, and overbold, they hold on her like the lustrous black-egged eyes of a ruined man.
      Briefly the seal's lips roll to display his sharp conical teeth, strong enough to dismember a large bird, she thinks, strong enough to rip her flesh.  Her panic rises.  If she turns her head away from him to look for help, even for a second, God knows what he'll do.  He may strike.  Seals startle easily, someone once told her, their behavior as unpredictable as human love.  Yet if she remains where she is...
      They tread the cold sea together, Katherine and the seal.  Above them, sandpipers drop their miserable cries as they fly.  Splinters of high voices peak on the blue wind.  In the distance, there is the low mechanical churr of a train.  Around them, the sea continues its cool lamenting slap.

The rest of the novel appears to have little to do with slapping seas or scary seals, but those first paragraphs carry such beautiful threat that I can't help but read on.  Here's the Jacket Copy:

During the hot Irish summer of 1969, tensions rise in Belfast where Katherine, a former actress, and George, a firefighter, struggle to keep buried secrets from destroying their marriage. As Catholic Republicans and Protestant Loyalists clash during the “Troubles” and Northern Ireland moves to the brink of civil war, the lines between private anguish and public outrage disintegrate. An exploration of memory, childhood, illicit love, and loss, Ghost Moth is an exceptional tale about a family—and a country—seeking freedom from ghosts of the past.

Is This Tomorrow by Caroline Leavitt (Algonquin Books):  Following in the wake of her previously successful novel with Algonquin, Pictures of You, Caroline Leavitt is poised to make another splash in bookstores with this new work of fiction that has mid-century Communist paranoia as its fulcrum.  In the press materials accompanying Is This Tomorrow, Leavitt said this book began with a question she pondered: "Can outsiders become a part of a community and feel safe in that community?"  She puts her characters through the wringer in answering that question and keeps the reader glued to the page.  Here's the Jacket Copy:

In 1956, Ava Lark rents a house with her twelve-year-old son, Lewis, in a desirable Boston suburb. Ava is beautiful, divorced, Jewish, and a working mom. She finds her neighbors less than welcoming. Lewis yearns for his absent father, befriending the only other fatherless kids: Jimmy and Rose. One afternoon, Jimmy goes missing. The neighborhood—in the throes of Cold War paranoia—seizes the opportunity to further ostracize Ava and her son.  Years later, when Lewis and Rose reunite to untangle the final pieces of the tragic puzzle, they must decide: Should you tell the truth even if it hurts those you love, or should some secrets remain buried?

I can't wait to read Is This Tomorrow and find out all the answers.  Blurbworthiness: "A beautiful free-spirited divorcee is shunned by her neighbors. A boy from that neighborhood goes missing. This is the engine that drives Leavitt's latest story, a page turner from first to last. I loved the way Leavitt's Mad Men-like examination of shifting American values dovetails with her vivid tale of heartbreak and hope. An enthusiastic thumbs-up from this grateful reader."  (Wally Lamb, author of The Hour I First Believed)

The Wonder Bread Summer by Jessica Anya Blau  (Harper Perennial):  Jessica Anya Blau's new novel opens with a scene in a dress shop fitting room that is simultaneously sexy and terrifying.  It will probably make you squirm a little--but that's what Blau is hoping for, I think.  At the very least, it's riveting writing and I had a hard time setting the book aside.  Here are the Opening Lines:

Allie was in a fitting room with a thirty-three-year-old man named Jonas, pulling pinches of cocaine out of a Wonder Bread bag that was more than three-quarters full.  It was the first time she had tried coke.  Her heart was rat-a-tat-tatting and her limbs were trembling like a small poodle's.  Clearly, this had been a poor decision.

Here's the Jacket Copy:

In The Wonder Bread Summer, loosely based on Alice in Wonderland, 20-year-old Allie Dodgson has adventures that rival those Alice had down the rabbit hole. Or those of Weeds’ Nancy Botwin.  Allison is working at a dress shop to help pay for college. The dress shop turns out to be a front for drug dealers.  And Allison ends up on the run—with a Wonder Bread bag full of cocaine. With a hit man after her, Allison wants the help of her parents. But there’s a problem: Her mom took off when Allison was eight; her dad moves so often Allison that doesn’t even have his phone number….Set in 1980s California, The Wonder Bread Summer is a wickedly funny and fresh caper that’s sure to please fans of Christopher Moore, Carl Hiaasen, and Marcy Dermansky.

The Liars' Gospel by Naomi Alderman (Little, Brown and Company):  The Jacket Copy for Naomi Alderman's new novel doesn't even do it justice, so I'm not going to reprint it here.  Suffice to say, the plot boils down to this: The story of Jesus (Yehoshuah here) is told by four people closest to him a year after his death.  New Testament narratives are as old as....well, as old as the Good Book itself.  So it would take some high-voltage writing to make a novel like this stand out from the rest of the congregation.  Based on the Opening Lines of The Liars' Gospel, I'd say Alderman has a live wire on her hands:

      This was how it happened.
      It is important to quiet the lamb, that is the first thing. A young man, learning the skills of priesthood, sometimes approaches the task with brutality. But it must be done softly, even lovingly. Lambs are trusting creatures. Touch it on the forehead just above the spot between the eyes. Breathe slowly and evenly, close enough to the creature to inhale the meaty scent of wool. It will know if you are nervous. Hold yourself steady. Whisper the sacred words. Grasp the knife as you have practiced. Plunge the blade into the neck swiftly, just below the jaw. There must be no pausing. The knife must be sharp enough that almost no pressure is needed. Move it down evenly and quickly, severing the tendons and nerves as the blood begins to flow and the lamb’s muscles spasm. Withdraw. The entire motion should take less than the time of one in-breath.
      Hold the lamb so that the blood gushes down, that it may be caught in the sacred cup. There is a great deal of blood; the life is in the blood. It is appropriate at this point to meditate on the blood in your own body, on how quickly and easily it could be released, on how one day it will cease to flow. Sacrifice is a meditation on vulnerability. Your blood is no redder than this creature’s. Your skin is no tougher. Your understanding of the events which will lead to your own death is probably no greater than this lamb’s comprehension.
      The smell of it is strong: iron and salt and sharpness. A priest catches the blood in the cup. The cup becomes full. The priest scatters the blood, spatters it to the four corners of the altar. The smell increases. The lamb stops twitching. The last traces of life are gone from it. This is how quickly it happens. When the blood is drained, slice open the skin and pull it from the carcass. Now the creature is meat. Every living being is meat for another. Do you think that the mosquito – one of the smallest of God’s creatures – looks on us as anything other than food? Worms will one day devour you – do you imagine they will notice your intellect, your kindness, your riches, your beauty? Everything is eaten by some other thing. Do not think that because you have knives of bronze you are more than this lamb. All of us are lambs before the Almighty.
      Remove the sacred organs from the flesh. Pull them, separating and cutting the sinews which hold them in place. Moments ago, they had purpose: like each man in the Temple, they had their functions to perform. Now they are objects to be burned in the holy fires. Take care not to pierce the bowel – the stench will be appalling. This is no ritual of the spirit, it is a matter of the body. Remember that your bowel too contains feces, that the woman whom you most desire in all the world is, at this moment as at all others, full of mucus and feces. Be humble. Remove the forbidden fats which may not be eaten: the sheet of fat across the abdomen, the fat of the kidneys.
      Place the organs and the forbidden fats into the fire of the altar. As they burn, offer up praises to the Almighty, who has given us this holy duty, who has given us the wit to understand His works, who has placed us above the beasts in knowledge and in wisdom. As the fats burn, their outer membranes blackening, the soft white matter liquefying and dripping down among the burning branches, the smell will be sweet and delicious. These are the sweet savors for the Lord. Your mouth will begin to salivate, your stomach, if you have not eaten for some time, may begin to growl. You are not an angel, a disembodied spirit without desire. You are a body, like this lamb. You want to eat this flesh. You are a soul also, the more to praise your Creator. Remember what you are. Give thanks. When the fats and organs are consumed, the animal’s carcass may be removed. It will be cooked for you and your fellow priests. Thus you will share the meal with God.
      This is the daily sacrifice. Every day, twice a day, morning and evening, a year-old lamb, healthy and without blemish. Every time, it is a sacred thing. Every time, the animal is slain for the glory of God, not for the mere satisfaction of our hungers. Every time, as the life bleeds out, the priest should look, and notice, and give thanks for the animal whose life has returned to its Creator and whose flesh provides sweet savors for the Lord and nourishment for His servants.

Temple Grove by Scott Elliot (University of Washington Press):  In her praise of Scott Elliott's new novel, Kim Barnes (In the Kingdom of Men) compares his work to two of my favorite contemporary writers: Alan Heathcock and Benjamin Percy.  So you know I'm already sitting up a little straighter in my chair, senses a-tingle.  Volt and The Wilding were two of the finest works of fiction I've read this century which addressed man's humble place in nature.  And now comes Temple Grove which takes us deep into the forests of the Pacific Northwest.  I lived in Oregon for four years, earning my degree from the University of Oregon, so I'm always interested in novels which explore the edgy relationship between loggers and eco-terrorists who drive metal spikes into trees in protest.  Temple Grove looks like it will be a novel in which you can practically smell the loamy, fern-festered earth and feel the ever-present mist in the air.  Here's the Jacket Copy:

Deep in the heart of Washington State's Olympic Peninsula lies Temple Grove, one of the last stands of ancient Douglas firs not under federal protection from logging. Bill Newton, a gyppo logger desperate for work and a place to hide, has come to Temple Grove for the money to be made from the timber. There to stop him is Paul, a young Makah environmentalist who will break the law to save the trees. A dangerous chase into the wilds of Olympic National Park ensues, revealing a long-hidden secret that inextricably links the two men. Joining the pursuit are FBI agents who target Paul as an eco-terrorist, and his mother, Trace, who is determined to protect him. Temple Grove is a gripping tale of suspense and a multilayered novel of place that captures in taut, luminous prose the traditions that tie people to this powerful landscape and the conflicts that run deep among them.

Oh, and here's that Blurbworthiness I mentioned earlier:  "Like Alan Heathcock and Benjamin Percy, Scott Elliott writes from that place where the old myths and the new stories collide. In Temple Grove, he reminds us of what it means to be lost to everyone and everything we have ever loved...and to be found again. It is a story of longing, cruelty, forgiveness, and redemption, shot through with intimate descriptions of a land on the cusp of ruin that will break your heart with their beauty."  (Kim Barnes)

Vacationland by Sarah Stonich (University of Minnesota Press):  Okay, okay, I'll admit I'm kind of a sucker for paint-by-number paintings on book cover designs (see also the similarly-titled Jamesland by Michele Huneven) and I especially like the work Mingovits Design has done on the cover for Sarah Stonich's novel--notice how the fawn stands out from the faded background and interweaves through the font of the title.  Okay, fine, the cover got my attention; but it's the contents inside the package that really matter.  Like so many of the other books mentioned in this edition of Front Porch Books, Stonich had me at "Hello."  Here are the Opening Lines:

      When Ilsa shakes snow from her ruff the thing is tossed from her jaws to land and skitter across the linoleum. At the sink with her back to the dog, Meg scrapes egg from a pan and idly wonders if she’s being delivered another frozen bone. When it rolls to a stop near her slipper, she sees. There is no mistaking it, snow-crusted as it is.
      “Real?” Meg squeals, answering the question. She vaults back, her own hand meeting her mouth as if zip-lined. Her next words gurgle into her palm, but when she swivels to where Ilsa sits, her voice is clear, “Bad, bad dog!”
      Pivoting to the dark window, she gasps at her reflection. On the other side of the glass the first storm of the season has already dropped eight inches and it’s still coming down. Meg inhales and exhales in sync with gusts of corn-snow battering the window, hoping that upon turning back she’ll see she’s utterly, ridiculously mistaken.
      Her kitchen had once been the bar and lounge of Naledi Lodge. Besides this building, little suggests the place was ever a thriving resort. A pair of dry gas pumps lean like drunks near the dock, and pilings poke blindly through the ice as if groping for the vanished boathouse. All but two of the little cabins have been razed. Little Hatchet is a glacial lake shaped as you might expect, poised as if chopping down from Ontario, with the town of Hatchet Inlet stuck to its blade. Naledi sits at the northernmost point near the frozen handle.
      There are two seasons on Little Hatchet – blistering, black-fly summers and long winters with short days that dawn cold, colder, and, as the hand thawing on Meg’s floor mutely suggests – life threatening.

I like how Stonich delays the revelation of that hand (though I sort of suspected it was coming).  I also like the visual details with which she paints the setting (the gas pumps leaning like drunks, corn-snow hitting the window).  Marvelous, marvelous writing is at work on these pages.  Ah, but you'll want to know what the book is about, right?  Here you go--the Jacket Copy:

On a lake in northernmost Minnesota, you might find Naledi Lodge—only two cabins still standing, its pathways now trodden mostly by memories. And there you might meet Meg, or the ghost of the girl she was, growing up under her grandfather’s care in a world apart and a lifetime ago. Now an artist, Meg paints images “reflected across the mirrors of memory and water,” much as the linked stories of Vacationland cast shimmering spells across distance and time.  Those whose paths have crossed at Naledi inhabit Vacationland: a man from nearby Hatchet Inlet who knew Meg back when, a Sarajevo refugee sponsored by two parishes who can’t afford “their own refugee,” aged sisters traveling to fulfill a fateful pact once made at the resort, a philandering ad man, a lonely Ojibwe stonemason, and a haiku-spouting girl rescued from a bog. Sarah Stonich, whose work has been described as “unexpected and moving” by the Chicago Tribune and “a well-paced feast” by the Los Angeles Times, weaves these tales of love and loss, heartbreak and redemption into a rich novel of interconnected and disjointed lives. Vacationland is a moving portrait of a place—at once timeless and of the moment, composed of conflicting dreams and shared experience—and of the woman bound to it by legacy and sometimes longing, but not necessarily by choice.